Plot

A bumbling detective comes to the rescue of a damsel in distress when a drug smuggler wants to force her to marry him.

Coke Ennyday, the scientific detective, divides his own time in periods for "Sleep", "Eat", "Dope" and "Drink". In fact he's used to overcome every situation with drugs: consuming it to increase his energies or injecting it in his opponents to KO them. To help the police he discovers a contraband of opium (which he eagerly tastes) transported with "Leaping Fishes", and the blackmail of a mysterious man who wants to marry the "fish blower" girl. Will Coke be able to free the girl ?—Spider Baby <spider@on-the-road.com>

Before gaining fame as an action hero, Douglas Fairbanks appeared in this oddity of a film from 1916, supposedly co-written by the star himself, D.W. Griffith and Tod Browning, although only the latter received billing. The nimble heartthrob stars as Coke Ennyday, "the world's greatest scientific detective". The sleuth employs copious amounts of cocaine, an array of quirky gadgets and his not always quick wit to solve the titular mystery of this bizarre thinly veiled parody of the "Sherlock Holmes" series.—toshist, a.k.a. toshguy

I.M. Keene, the chief of police, receives a letter informing him of a mysterious gentleman about the neighborhood who is rolling in wealth. Unable to solve the mystery, he sends for the celebrated detective, Coke Anneyday, and he agrees to undertake the job. In locating the gentleman of wealth, Coke unearths a great opium plot. Two Japs ride leaping fish, which are swimming machines, out to a bell-buoy, where they get opium which has been left there by a smuggler's ship. The plot thickens rapidly. The villains discover they are being watched, and try to make their getaway, observed by the little girl whose duty it is to inflate the fish. Coke, meanwhile, in eating some of the opium acquires an opium jag. He recovers, however, and takes up the trail with thrilling results in which he has a terrible duel in the dark with the gentleman of wealth, overcomes his enemies with a mysterious drug, and claims the little fish-blower for his own.—Moving Picture World synopsis